Nature

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM for short) has roots that extend back thousands of years, with seeds in folk cures that were already old when ancient Chinese scholars first began writing them down. It's no wonder, then, that one of China's oldest official medicinal plants gardens has been declared by Guinness World Records to be the world's largest of its kind.

Put a shell to your ear and you can hear the ocean. Japanese scientists have taken that concept to a higher level, inventing a device called the “kai-lingual” that can “hear” oysters commenting on their environment. Well shucks!

The search is truly on for what makes people live past 100 years ... aside from eating right, exercising regularly, and having lots of social
contact. It's about their genomic makeup, and Archon Genomics is holding a big,
as in 10 million dollars, prize for the first genetics team to develop
the sequence of genes that can produce medical grade genomes from 100
centenarians. Personalized medicine, here we come!

Lights, camera, inaction! If you're one of those people who enjoys watching the grass grow, you've got entirely too much time on your hands... or, you've got the Recolo Interval Recorder from Japan's Compact Impact.

Not everyone who engages in repetitive behavior suffers from obsessive
compulsive disorder (OCD). It may depend, says Professor David Eilam of Tel
Aviv University (TAU), on whether it's a heads or tails activity.

In what is believed to be the first instance of electronic gamers
reaching a scientific discovery before trained research scientists,
University of Washington (UW) gamers did indeed produce a model of an
enzyme in AIDS and other viruses that scientists have been trying to
model for more than 10 years. This was not just an academic exercise to
test the new UW Fold-it game; discovery of the AIDS molecule in question
opens the door to a whole new line of retroviral drugs.

You may not have thought about this yourself, but dogs tend to circle around before they poop. With that in mind, PupGear, one of the originators of indoor potties for dogs, has created a circular two-piece potty system it calls the Go Spot® Circular Dog Potty System.

For the third year in a row, the Biomimicry Institute,
a non-profit organication that promotes the study and imitation of
designs found in nature, is sponsoring the Biomimicry Student Design Challenge.
This year the Challenge, which is open to college students world-wide,
is to use biomimicry to design a solution that results in more efficient
use of energy and ultimately reduces greenhouse gases. No small feat,
but the Institute provides students with plenty of resources on
biomimicry....

Giant pandas are still very rare, so it's not likely that their poop
will be used as a substitute for gasolene, but the chemical analysis of panda
poop has provided new information about the microbes that assist pandas
in digesting some of the roughest roughage in nature -
lignocellulose - and that information could certainly lead to a
biofuel that is much more efficient than any biomass fuels that are being produced currently.

Chemists at Yale University have made the first commercially viable synthesization of huperzine A. A natural enzyme inhibitor, huperzine A has been extracted from a Chinese moss, the Huperzia serrata plant, and it's been used to treat Alzheimer's disease in China.

... .A spur-of-the-moment experiment, cracking the secret of the 'coffee-ring
effect,' captured the imaginations of sophisticated scientists, and voila!
They discovered a new technique for making inks and paints that will
positively impact these technologies, enhance public appreciation of the
techniques, and make them some money too.

International trophy hunters have formally applied to stalk Tibetan Gazelles and Himalayan Blue Sheep native to China's mountainous Qinghai province. If approved, it would be the first time in 5 years that sportsmen would be allowed to lock, load, and let the lead fly on Chinese soil.